Life Eternal

  “I thought you were still in exams,” I said as a taxi pulled over to the curb and popped its trunk.

  Noah shook his head. “I was sitting in my room when I saw you step outside. You looked like you were about to be blown away.”

  I laughed. “Definitely not with this thing,” I said, lifting my suitcase.

  “Here, let me get that,” he said, but I pulled it out of reach.

  “I can do it,” I said, and with some difficulty, I pushed it into the trunk.

  “Right,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Of course you can.”

  The exhaust from the car fogged in the cold as we stood there, not quite looking at each other. “So, I guess I’ll see you when you get back?” Noah said, as if he had meant to say something else, but had changed his mind.

  “Yeah,” I said, because what else could I say?

  He forced a smile. “Great.”

  “Great.”

  Noah made to open the door for me, but I beat him to it, our hands touching as I reached the handle. “Oh, you don’t have to—”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  After I slammed the door, he brushed away a little circle of snow from the window so that we could see each other. He waved good-bye. And I was off.

  When I got to the airport, I checked my bag and boarded a rickety little airplane with only one bathroom and one stewardess.

  The looming buildings of Montreal shrank into white as we ascended through the clouds.

  A disheveled college boy in a baggy sweater was sitting next to me. He was reading Dante’s Inferno. He smiled when he saw me staring at his book. “Do you know it?” he asked, his gaze wandering from my face to my stockings.

  I pulled down my skirt. “No,” I said quickly, and put on my headphones.

  Massachusetts was masked by a white flurry when we landed. Dustin met me at the airport with a takeout cup of hot chocolate and a big hug, and insisted on carrying my suitcase to the car.

  Barren trees frosted in ice formed a canopy over the roads as we drove west to Wintershire House, the tires squeaking as they pressed into the snow.

  Dustin asked me about Montreal and St. Clément as he navigated. Tinny Christmas music played softly in the background. We passed frozen ponds, churches with Nativity scenes out front, and white colonial houses buried in snow, their owners shoveling tiny trails to their front doors.

  The streetlamps turned on one by one as we drove up the driveway to my grandfather’s mansion. Burlap sacks covered the topiaries, now dusted in white. My grandfather’s car was nowhere to be seen.

  “He’s traveling on business but will be back for dinner,” Dustin said as he hoisted my suitcase out of the trunk.

  And sure enough, when I ran down the stairs an hour later, my grandfather was standing in the dining room, slinging his dinner jacket over the back of the chair.

  “Ah, Renée. Welcome back.” He always said back instead of home.

  “Thanks.”

  Dustin served us a robust meal of pot roast and spaghetti puttanesca. My grandfather tucked his napkin into the collar of his shirt and picked up his fork and knife.

  I stared at the pasta, remembering the night at the grocery store with Noah when I had seen Dante on the street. “Wait for me,” he’d written on the flyer.

  “Eat,” my grandfather said. “You look gaunt. Gaunt and tired. I take this to mean St. Clément is keeping you busy?”

  I picked at my food but couldn’t bring myself to eat it. “You never told me that dying with gauze in the mouth was rare for Monitors,” I said. “How come?”

  He coughed.

  “May I get you some water?” Dustin said from the corner.

  “No, no, that won’t be necessary.” Wiping his mouth, my grandfather met my gaze. “I see they’re teaching you a lot at that school.”

  “Why did you make it seem like the way my parents and Miss LaBarge died was normal, when you knew it wasn’t?”

  “I didn’t want to upset you any more than I already had.”

  “But you knew that they were probably killed by the Liberum. How could you keep that from me?”

  He seemed surprised that I knew about the brotherhood of Undead. “I wanted to protect you. If the Liberum killed your parents, there was good chance they could kill you too. It was easier to keep you ignorant of them, in case you got it in your head to go out and find them. I wouldn’t put that type of foolish attempt at heroism past you.”

  He picked up his fork and began cutting his meat, eating it in big, quick mouthfuls.

  “What else do you know that you haven’t told me?” I asked, watching him chew.

  He took a sip of sparkling water. “Excuse me?”

  “You must know other things, being the headmaster of Gottfried. You never even told me about the High Monitor Court. You didn’t tell me about any of it.”

  “If I may remind you, this summer you were not all that inclined to listen to anything I said. You showed no interest in engaging with the world outside your head.” He pulled the napkin out of his shirt.

  “You’re leaving?” I asked. We had only sat down a few minutes ago.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve finished my meal and now I must get to work.”

  “But—”

  “If I may make a suggestion, I think you should change the focus of your studies. I am paying your tuition so that you can hone your skills as a Monitor.”

  “But isn’t learning about the Liberum necessary if I’m going to hone my skills?”

  “No. The task at hand is for you to develop technical abilities as a Monitor, not to play detective. We have actual detectives for that.” Pushing his plate aside, he stood up and nodded to Dustin to clear the table.

  The next week passed by in a flurry. Dustin took it upon himself to teach me how to cook. Every time I tried to talk to my grandfather about anything—the Liberum, the Nine Sisters, my parents, Miss LaBarge—Dustin would whisk me away to the kitchen, arm me with a rolling pin and an apron, and put me to work, as if he were trying to distract me.

  We started with mincemeat pies, the flour of the crust dusting the counters and floors so that inside looked just like outside. After that we made wild mushroom soup and stuffed artichokes, and I graduated to roasting and carving a chicken. First, cut along the breast; next, sever the thighs; and finally, dismember the wings. The cooking part was tedious, but dismembering the chicken was easy, even a little enjoyable, though I didn’t want to admit it.

  “You’re a natural,” Dustin said, examining the carcass.

  But all I saw when I stared at the bird was the crest of the canary. No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, the secret of the Nine Sisters kept haunting me. My parents, Miss LaBarge—they’d been killed while searching for it. If I were braver, I would continue what they’d started. I’d comb through my visions, find the missing clue that led to the ninth sister, and dig up her secret. I would make sure that the Undead who killed my parents and Miss LaBarge would never find it. But therein lay the problem. What if the Undead who’d killed them was Dante?

  At nightfall, when the kitchen staff had retired for the day, I went to the huge lazy Susan by the refrigerator and stepped inside, just like I had done last winter, and pulled on the hook on the back shelf. The ground wobbled and then began to rotate until I was thrust into the room on the other side of the wall. The First Living Room, where my grandfather kept all of his Monitoring books, tools, and paraphernalia, was adorned with a heavy chandelier, hard antique sofas, and animal busts, which followed me with glassy eyes as I scoured through a book on modern Undead theories. I meant to search for information on the Nine Sisters, but when I turned to the index, I found myself flipping to W, and scanning the list until I found the word Wanderlust.

  After an hour, I collapsed on one of the sofas, my neck sore and my fingers dusty. I hadn’t found anything. Upstairs, I heard the faucet turn on, the water beating against the ceiling. My grandfather was taking a bath. Running my hands alon
g the carved wood of the armrest, I listened to him hum as the faucet turned off. There was one other place I could check, but I didn’t have much time. Slipping back into the kitchen, I tiptoed down the hall and through the second door on the right.

  A single table lamp illuminated my grandfather’s office in a narrow cone of light, where papers scrawled with handwritten notes were strewn about his desk. As I lifted them to check beneath, a file slid out, its contents spilling to the floor. I bent down to pick them up when I noticed that they were articles and postcards, each stuck with pinholes and pieces of tape. Some passages were circled with marker, illegible notes written in the margins in handwriting that I recognized from my last year at Gottfried: Miss LaBarge’s.

  The papers suddenly felt incredibly delicate beneath my fingers as I realized they were the clippings from her cottage. Before I could get a better look at them I heard a noise through the ceiling. Freezing, I listened to the drain emptying through pipes in the wall, and my grandfather’s footsteps as he walked down the upstairs hallway.

  Gathering the articles in my arms, I stole down the long corridor and into the library. Snowflakes swirled around the windowpanes as I sat at the desk and picked up the first clipping.

  It was a yellowed postcard with a photograph of majestic black rock formations jutting out of the earth like towers. At their base was a dark valley swathed in moss. BREAKER CHASM, VERMONT, the caption read.

  I had to go there, I thought suddenly. I had to go there now. The grandfather clock began to chime, taunting me. There was no time, I thought. No time. I had to get to Breaker Chasm. Soon it would be too late.

  I looked at the hands of the clock. They pointed to nine p.m. I blinked and the hands had rotated backward to one p.m.

  More time, I thought urgently, and blinked again. The hands spun faster. In an instant, I felt tired, the room blurring as my eyelids grew heavier and heavier, until I could no longer muster the energy to keep them open.

  When I woke up, I was sitting on a train. Afternoon sun streamed through the windows, which revealed a landscape of evergreens coated in soft, fluffy snow. The trees sped past the window as I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket and unfolded it. An address was written on one side: 15 Knollwood Drive.

  Over the intercom, the conductor announced that the next stop would be Breaker Chasm. Eagerly, I looked out the window. We were nearing the base of a mountain, where a tunnel had been bored through the hillside. Suddenly worried, I pressed my face against the glass to look at the railroad tracks. There was only one set, and they led directly into the tunnel. I couldn’t go there; I would die.

  I stood up and walked briskly down the aisle. The train wasn’t very crowded; most of the other passengers were sleeping or listening to music. I tried to not to disturb them as I made my way to the exit door. Trying to be discreet, I pulled the handle, but the door was locked.

  I glanced out the window again. We had almost reached the mouth of the tunnel. Quickly, I slid open the door leading to the next car and stepped outside. The cold December air blew past my face as I straddled the narrow platform connecting my car to the next. The noise of the wheels on the tracks below me was deafening.

  The train rattled as the front of it entered the tunnel. I inched toward the edge of the platform. Beyond it was just the snowy ground, rushing by much faster than I had expected. I waited for a clearing in the trees, and just before the car entered the tunnel, I jumped.

  It was painless. I landed in the snow and slid a little ways down the hill until a patch of underbrush broke my fall. There, I watched as the mountain swallowed the rest of the train, leaving behind a curl of black smoke.

  I traveled the rest of the way by foot, trudging through the knee-deep snow as I skirted around the mountain and followed the train tracks until I reached a small town, the sun setting behind the peaks of the houses. A sign stood on the side of the road. Written in friendly cursive were the words: BREAKER CHASM WELCOMES YOU!

  It was a quaint town—quiet. As I walked down the road, the streetlamps clicked on above me. Most of the stores were closed, except for a single gas station. I approached it. Inside, behind a register, sat an overweight man wearing a checkered shirt. He was eating something out of a Styrofoam container. Rolls and rolls of scratch tickets hung on the wall behind him.

  He stopped eating. “Cold night,” he said, stirring his food.

  I ignored his comment. “Can you point me toward Knollwood Drive?”

  “Are you heading to the farm?”

  “No,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve got lots of kids coming in here looking for one of those farms.”

  I didn’t respond. Instead, I leaned over the refrigerated case, picked out as many bottles of water as I could carry, and put them on the counter. “I’ll take these,” I said, searching through my pockets for change. The man gave me a strange look, but then rung me up and pointed me in the direction of Knollwood Drive.

  I walked for what seemed like miles, past frozen fields and barns, until I reached a tin mailbox. A little ways down the drive was a yellow farmhouse with a big yellow barn. There was no street sign, but on the side of the road I spotted dozens of small footprints embedded in the snow. I placed my bag of bottled water on the ground. Crouching over, I brushed off the mailbox so I could read the number, and then slipped a piece of paper out of my pocket and compared the addresses. Both read: 15 Knollwood Drive.

  Holding the joints in case they squeaked, I opened the door of the mailbox. Inside was a piece of paper. A single name was written on it: Cindy Bell.

  I folded the note into my pocket. Before I left, I opened a bottle of water and poured it out on the ground behind me to melt my footprints.

  I awoke to a loud crash, followed by the sound of things clattering to the floor.

  Blinking, I opened my eyes. The morning sun was burning the back of my neck as it shone through the window of my grandfather’s library. I must have slept through the night here, my head resting on the pile of clippings on the desk.

  Rolling my neck, I sat up and looked at the postcard of Breaker Chasm that had fallen out of the stack. I flipped it over to see if anything was written on it, but it was blank.

  Cindy Bell. That was Eleanor’s mom. Why had her name been written on a slip of paper in a mailbox?

  My thoughts were interrupted by a deep thump in an adjacent room. Then shouting. Tucking the postcard into my pocket, I ran out to the hallway.

  I followed the voices to my grandfather’s office, where I found him standing across the room from Dustin. Both of their faces were red and flustered.

  “We should have done something,” my grandfather yelled, not noticing that I was standing in the doorway. “Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”

  Dustin was about to respond when the floor creaked beneath me. Turning in my direction, both men went silent.

  The room was a complete mess. A platter of breakfast was strewn across the floor, the eggs, hollandaise sauce, jam, and pancakes all smeared into the wood among silverware and broken dishes.

  “What happened?” I asked, wincing as I took it all in.

  On top of all this lay dozens of loose papers, which looked like they had been purposely knocked off the desk. They were now matted to the ground, sopping up the syrup and coffee. Even more incredible was that Dustin wasn’t trying to clean it all up, as he normally would have.

  I glanced between him and my grandfather. I had never seen them fight before; I had never even seen Dustin angry.

  “What is going on?” I demanded.

  Before my grandfather could answer, the phone rang. He picked it up and growled, “Yes?”

  He looked at me. “It’s for you.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded. “I suggest you take it in the Red Room.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, and went to the small room down the hall, where I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  All I could hear was steady breathing on the other e
nd of the line.

  “Hello? Who is this?” I repeated.

  “It’s me,” a thick voice said.

  “Eleanor?” I said, sitting down on a bench. She sounded different. Somber.

  “Tell me what to do,” she said, pleading into the phone.

  “Do about what?” I asked, suddenly frightened.

  “She disappeared,” Eleanor said. “She must have run to the lake in the middle of the night while I was sleeping.”

  “Who disappeared? What lake? Where are you?”

  “I’m in the bathroom,” she said. “I’m in the bathroom of the ski lodge in Colorado.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. At first I thought she was in trouble, but it couldn’t be that bad if she was with her family skiing. I tried to steady my voice. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  There was a long pause.

  “They found my mom this morning by the lake. She’s dead.”

  After Eleanor hung up, I sat there on the bench for a long time, the receiver resting on my collarbone.

  The only information I could glean from her was that her mother left the ski lodge in the middle of the night, unbeknownst to Eleanor, and was found by the mountain patrol at the foot of a lake, dead, with gauze stuffed in her mouth. It had snowed several inches that night, covering all tracks except for those of the rescuers.

  Gauze. A lake. Just like Miss LaBarge.

  I thought of the photograph I had found in the cottage, of Miss LaBarge and Cindy Bell as young girls. I thought of Miss LaBarge’s funeral, and how Cindy Bell was sitting all alone on the boat, lost in her thoughts. Had she been searching for the secret of the Nine Sisters, too?

  Dropping the phone, I ran upstairs to my room. There, I searched my dresser until I found the postcards Eleanor had sent to me last summer when she was traveling in Europe with her mother. I’d kept them with me, rereading Dante’s embedded messages whenever I felt particularly lonely. But this time, I looked at the photographs on the cards. Each one was of a lake.

  Backing onto my bed, I flipped through the pictures again, amazed that I’d had these cards all along, but hadn’t realized what they suggested. Eleanor’s mother had been searching for the last part of the riddle in Europe, and had brought Eleanor along with her.